Chapter 08: Review

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2001
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Harmonium Guide

Chapter 08: Review

A great deal of very important information dealing with

the basics of Indian music was discussed here. Let’s take
the opportunity to review them.

The keyboard of the harmonium has a set of three

fundamental units of keys. The fundamental unit is shown
in Figure 8.1.
Figure 8.1

This structure of any keyboarded instrument has this

fundamental unit repeating over and over again. In
harmonium, it usually has three repeating patterns.

We discussed a little later that a fundamental unit is a

scale, which consists of seven notes. Once eight notes (7
notes + starting note of the next fundamental unit) are
completed, it is known to have completed one octave in
Western music, or a saptak (seven notes) in Indian
music. Figure 8.2 shows the scales and octave vs. saptak
comparison.
Figure 8.2

In understanding the relationships between any two

notes, we talk about half steps and whole steps. The
half step is one-key difference from the first note. A
whole step is a two key difference. The half-step is the
smallest unit of measure in describing distance between
two notes. Look at this diagram and recall from Chapter 5
that half-step does not always mean from a white to
black (or vice versa). Likewise, whole-step does not imply
a white-to-white (or vice-versa) relationship. The red
bracket is the half-step, while the blue is the whole-step.
Figure 8.3

The three saptaks in a typical harmonium is shown in

Figure 8.4.
Figure 8.4

Then, the discussion of the seven notes were described,

the notes were sa, re, ga, ma, pa, dha, and ni. They can
be abbreviated as S, R, G, m, P, D, and N. They are known
as suddha swars and can be represented by white keys.
The semi-tones between some suddha swars, are known
as vikrta swars, and are known as komal re, komal ga,
tivra ma, komal dha, and komal ni. They are
abbreviated as r, g, M, d, and n. The overall sargam, or
collection of notes, are shown below on Figure 8.5

Figure 8.5

Figure 8.6 shows these notes in the eyes of the entire

harmonium bearing the madra, madhya, and tar saptaks.

Figure 8.6

Lastly, here are the ten thats Visnu Narayana Bhatkhande

developed.

Asavari

S R g m P d n S’

Bilaval: (the major scale that we worked with)

S R G m P D N S’

Bhairava:
S r G m P d N S’

Bhairavi:

S r g m P d n S’

Kalyana:

S R G M P D N S’

Khammaja:

S R G m P D n S’

Purvi:

S r G M P d N S’

Marwa:

S r G M P D N S’
Todi:

S r g M P d N S’

Unless you have developed full knowledge of the

material, do not move onto the next unit. The next unit
will develop on more theoretical applications which
cannot be understood easily without understanding this
material first.

UPDATED: June 18, 2009